Panetta: 'America has been weakened'

10/13/13 11:11 AM EDT

Former Defense Secretary Leon Panetta on Sunday blasted “a small minority” in Congress that he said has been allowed to “take out their vengeance on American citizens.”

“I am really surprised that the lessons that were learned 17 years ago — that you don’t shut the government down, that you don’t hurt the American people — that that lesson was not learned and has been repeated,” said Panetta, a former Democratic congressman from California who was budget director in the Clinton White House.

Appearing on NBC’s “Meet the Press,” Panetta said he believes Democrats and Republicans “are pretty much at the same place.”